Cell-growth mechanisms in the vessel wall regularly play an important part in connection with the treatment of defects of vessels in the human or animal body. Cell growth can be on the one hand a cause of such a defect, as is the case for example with stenoses in blood vessels. Reduced or slow cell growth however can also be for example the cause of unsatisfactorily slow healing of defects in a vessel.
A number of widely different illnesses can result in so-called stenoses, that is to say constrictions in vessels in the body, with in part serious or even fatal consequences. Blood vessels are often affected in that respect. Thus for example arteriosclerosis with the vessel constrictions that it entails represents the most important and most frequent morbid change in the arteries, which can involve very serious consequences.
Various procedures have been adopted for the treatment or prophylaxis of such stenoses. Thus for example for stenosis prophylaxis or for the treatment of constrictions which have not yet progressed very far, medication treatments are used and the patient is prescribed an appropriate diet, while more advanced stenoses are generally treated by operative intervention. In that situation the affected locations in the vessel are mostly expanded by means of a balloon catheter. In that balloon dilation procedure, it is frequently necessary to insert a so-called stent into the vessel in order to hold it in an expanded condition.
In order to prevent so-called re-stenoses after the vessel has been treated, besides medication treatments and suitable adjustment to the nutrition of the patient, stents have also been proposed, which on their side towards the vessel are covered with cloths or the like in order to prevent renewed constriction of the vessel as a result of the vessel wall growing into the passage of the vessel, which is caused by cell growth, that is to say uncontrolled proliferation of the cell wall vessels. The proposed methods suffer from various disadvantages. Thus, adjustment to diet can often only have a supporting effect while medicational treatment can admittedly mostly be used with really good success, but it can give rise to widely varying side-effects according to the respective patient. Invasive treatment with a stent of a suitable configuration, which completely covers the wall of the vessel, is on the one hand relatively complicated and expensive, while on the other hand it is not possible to foresee to what extent unretarded cell proliferation or growth under the covering becomes a possibly menacing strain for the vessel.
In general terms, only medicational treatments with the disadvantages already referred to above are proposed for the purposes of speeding up healing of defects of a vessel, for example for accelerated healing of the wound after a surgical intervention.